Mission From Pluto Arcade Game

This project uses a collection of techniques and creation processes to create a fun carnival game with a cool celestial theme. This project uses a laser cut wooden track with slanted levels, balanced with 3-d printed stands, trying to force the rolling piece to stay on the level, but with enough force, can overcome the pull and move to the next level. As you move down the track, the lights will light up the further you go, and the pitch of travel will increase. Once you land on a planet, it will be displayed on the screen, and play a win tone if you make it to earth, and a lose tone if not.

Supplies

Raspberry Pi Pico 2w w/ breadboard

Speaker w/ Amp

Bambu labs A1 mini 3D printer

laser cutter

1/8 in birch wood

20 count neopixel string lights

TOF distance sensor

12-pad capacitive touch sensor

alligator clips

conductive paint and tape

wood stainer

paint markers

hot glue

electrical tape

Step 1: Design

The design started with the track, which I knew needed to have a floating element to allow for the spaceship to return if overthrown to the end. I achieved this by printing out two pieces for the track on either side, essentially resulting in 4 walls. The inner two walls is made of two pieces the top track which the piece runs on, and the lower return track. The two outside walls act as supports, keeping the upper track wall floating above the lower return wall. To achieve this, all the walls had holes cut out in the same location on the inner and outside walls, and threaded 3D printed pegs through the slots with washers and caps to hold them in place. This allowed the walls to float in place from the support of its outside wall. To keep the walls up, I designed 3D printed board holders for the boards to slot in to, which ensured a consistent spacing between the walls at all times. Finally, I laser cut a board that can be attached to 3D printed spacers that can all be placed on the side the player stands on, covering most of the wiring. This also gives a place for the distance sensor to be mounted to. Finally, the actual design of the piece is a simple conic diamond with handles on the end that roll on the wall.

Step 2: Construction

Once the pieces have been cut and printed, construction involved slotting the pegs through slots, attaching it to its stand, and setting it in place. On one of the inner walls that the rolling devices roll on, ever step will have two pieces of conductive tape, one on the back wall of that level, and one on the wood the roller rolls on. The back wall tape is the sensor that triggers the capacitive touch sensor to tell the computer which planet it is, and the bottom tape it rests on allows it to fake capacitance. The game piece the player uses gets wrapped in conductive tape, and so when it comes in contact with both the trigger sensor, and the grounding tape, it completes the circuit, and triggers the sensor. For each back wall sensor, an individual line is painted from the tape to the side the player stands on in conductive paint, making sure none touch, and then each line has conductive painted wrapped around the end of the wood to give the alligator clips something to attach to. the grounding tapes all get connected with conductive paint on the other side of the wood to a single conductive tape point on the bottom that another alligator clip attaches to to ground all the levels. Each alligator clip is attached to a different capacitive touch point that triggers the planet animation on the hub75. The outside walls all get stained with black wood stain, and using white paint marker, write the names of the planets on reverse order, so the last one at the end is the Sun and you start on Pluto. On the outside walls, glue the lights so that there are roughly an even number of lights on each side. The tof sensor can be attached to the wall on the player side, looking down the ramp so it can see the rolling piece at all times until it falls to the sun. All of these are hooked up to the pico 2w using the wiring configuration see in the program. All of this is put on the inside of the game, in between the outer and inner walls of the side with the conduction points on it.

Step 3: Programming

The program for this uses capacitive touch to trigger the hub75 to activate a planet animation with an audio que, and the tof sensor to trigger the lights and tone change as it moves down the ramp. The capacitive touch triggers to a specific pad, and depending on which pad is activated, it will know which planet is associated with it, and will display it on the screen. Once it detects a planet has been triggered, it will show the planet name for a few seconds while it plays a win or losing chime before disappearing again and resetting the game. For the TOF sensor, if it is just turned on and the piece is too close, nothing will happen, but once the piece is taken out of its resting position, the lights and tone will trigger. The TOF sensor tracks the distance of the piece, converts it to a ratio of how far it is down the track, and translates that in to how many lights need to be activated and how high of a pitch should be getting played. If a planet is landed on, it overpowers the TOF sensor to turn all the lights on to the associated planet color and play the audio, before resetting and giving power back to the TOF sensor.